Whenever people have professional instructional lessons, or they practice a sport or a game, such as tennis, for example, they usually like to have a number of balls close to them so that they can practice hitting them, or serving them, in relatively close succession in repetitive fashion. After they have hit all the balls which are then laying around on the ground or on the playing surface of the tennis court at various distances from the person who is practicing, they must be picked up or retrieved so that they can be hit or served again. This task of picking up or retrieving the tennis balls requires a considerable amount of bending over, or stooping, in order to reach the tennis balls. This, of course, is hard on the spine and the back muscles and is tiresome and very wearying and ultimately productive of back aches and pains. Also, it is time consuming, which is particularly undesirable if the person who is practicing is taking expensive professional instruction or has rented the use of the tennis court or practice area for a stipulated period of time and naturally would prefer spending as much of that time in practicing and as little of that time as is possible in bending over and picking up stray tennis balls. There are tennis ball retrieving devices which are presently commercially available, such as described and illustrated in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,371,950 and 3,889,996 which issued on Mar. 5, 1968 and June 17, 1975, respectively, which permit the person who is practicing to pick up and retrieve tennis balls which are lying on the ground or on the playing surface of the tennis court without requiring them to bend over or stoop in such tiresome and wearying fashion. These devices are capable of picking up the tennis balls and placing them in a receptacle or container from which they are removed subsequently and used in the next practice session.
These tennis ball retrieving devices do eliminate some of the undesirable bending over and stooping during the picking up process but, when the tennis balls are being subsequently used in the next practice session, the person who is practicing must bend over and pick a tennis ball out of the receptacle or container, the bottom portion of which usually rests on the ground or on the playing surface of the tennis court. This is not too bad at the outset when the receptacle or container is completely full, inasmuch as such requires only a partial bending over or stooping to reach a tennis ball but gradually gets worse as the supply of balls in the receptacle or container becomes depleted, so that the person using such a device is soon bending over and stooping as much as ever to pick tennis balls out of the lower portion or the bottom of the receptacle or container.